A video claiming a tiger was loose near Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey went viral Tuesday night — viral enough that it started flooding 911 with calls. There was no tiger. Jackson police spent the night trying to talk the internet down.
"There Is NOT a Tiger on the Loose"
The Jackson Police Department put out a statement addressing the video directly: "After a recent video going viral on social media regarding what is being reported as a possible loose tiger, it has been confirmed there is NOT a tiger on the loose within the township." Six Flags Great Adventure backed that up, confirming all of its animals — including those at its Wild Safari Adventure drive-through park — were safe and accounted for in their enclosures.
Police didn't just debunk the video — they asked people to stop calling about it, saying the volume of calls was "tying up emergency lines and telecommunicators" who needed to handle actual emergencies.
Why People Believed It
The panic wasn't coming out of nowhere. Jackson has a real, if distant, history with an actual loose tiger: in 1999, a tiger was spotted wandering near Interstate 195 in the township and was ultimately euthanized after tranquilizing efforts failed. Twenty-seven years later, a viral video was enough to make the rumor feel plausible all over again — even with zero tigers actually missing from anywhere.
